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Book Announcement: The Jesus People Movement: a story of spiritual revolution among the hippies (Wipf & Stock, 2014)

This revised version of my PhD thesis is published in February 2014.

Thesis title – Upon Your Sons and Daughters: an analysis of the Pentecostalism in the Jesus People Movement and It's Aftermath

The Jesus
People Movement was a large religious phenomenon that arose out of an
amalgamation of the American counterculture and Hippie movements and American
Pentecostalism. Beginning in 1967 the
movement’s early participants were mostly hippies who had claimed a conversion
experience and instantaneous healing from drug addiction through an encounter
with Jesus Christ. By the mid-1970s the growing
phenomenon had attracted a broad range of youth, many of whom were not former
hippies, but who did relate to the counterculture movement and the generation
gap. Several enduring institutions arose
from the heyday and have continued to impact American Pentecostalism and
American Christianity more broadly. This
thesis examines the historical links between the Jesus People Movement,
American Pentecostalism, and the Hippie movement as well as the sociological
and theological resemblance to American Pentecostalism. Based on the family resemblance analogy, the
thesis concludes that the Jesus People Movement should be included as a
significant part of the story of American Pentecostalism.